


FUSES

by Espernyan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Excessive Swearing, Gen, Horror, Lesbians in Space, Military, POV Lesbian Character, Stream of Consciousness, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espernyan/pseuds/Espernyan
Summary: A space marine goes to try and scrounge up a fuse for her buddy's leg.A take on a nightmare I had, some time ago.





	FUSES

The corridor was cramped and confining and dark. Only I illuminated it, a pair of lights scything through the shadow only to reveal more of it. One on my weapon, one on my shoulder. Overhead, sparks flickered to life now and again, the thick conduits that provided power to the ship torn and shorted in places, no longer hidden by sheet metal ceiling panels which had once been uniform all down the way, but now were interrupted, some of the component pieces battered free, bent and rent and cast down to the once-pristine floor by some combination of applied force and artificial gravity.

I looked over my shoulder, spying the bulkhead behind which I had left my injured comrade-in-arms. My partner. A faint green glow illuminated it- the blast door, I mean- and a pang of worry struck at my heart.

Odd, wasn’t it? To think I had a heart.

They should’ve fixed that in basic.

I wouldn’t have minded them fixing the fear, too, but that might’ve required the brass to give a shit – good luck with that, asshole.

And good luck with that asshole, too.

It always tickled me fuckin’ pink, shit like that. The way commas and pauses and shit could entirely change the meaning of shit.

Ah, but I was distracting myself again. _Buck up, pussy, you’re not pretty enough to get away with slacking._

Drill Sergeant had said that.

_Yes, sir, Drill Sergeant, sir._

_Fuck you,_ sir, Drill Sergeant, sir.

Even _he_ found that one funny. He’d laughed the entire way through those push-ups.

I would have liked to tell myself that this was all just a power failure, and that nothing was wrong on this goddamn ship, but we’d seen enough by now to know better. Me and my partner, I mean.

Y’know, my wounded partner I’m supposed to be helping right fucking now.

Lieutenant always said I was a dreamer, but he was always trying to get in my pants, too.

Good luck with that, dipshit, I’m a fucking _dyke_.

And I slept with your sister. She was a nice girl, though. Relationship didn’t go anywhere. Hadn’t been much to it, really.

Guess it was sorta like the LT’s career that way, only there were women involved, and nobody was a pompous shithead.

My destination was the utility closet at the far end of the corridor – that had a little red light over top of its door, and by now my timid little footsteps had got me halfway there.

All I needed was a… what the fuck are those things called? Fuses? I needed a fuse, one of the – not the huge fuckers like the ship itself used in places, but not the little ones like houses used, either. A medium fuse. For her leg.

Nothing ate my face by the time I reached the stupid closet, and I beat the door with the butt of my rifle until it opened. Thank christ the fucker who designed this ship was an _idiot_.

Well, it was probably fuckers, right? A ship is way too goddamn big to be designed by one asshole.

That made it worse, because a whole shitload of people had been fucking stupid enough to make it so the doors would just open if you broke their control panels enough.

Then again, that had saved my ass, so maybe they’d seen enough movies that they understood that all the ‘feature’ would do is help survivors of whatever inevitable and fucked up shit happened aboard the godforsaken thing.

It wasn’t as if a determined individual wouldn’t find a way through anyways, right?

The explosives weren’t for fucking show.

I was shuffling through drawers for fifteen fucking minutes before I realized one of them was labeled fucking “FUSES”.

Fuck.

The debris in the hallway hadn’t been this bad when I’d come this way, and I was fucking sure of it.

My weapon-light illuminated the detached head of one of those creepy fucking baby dolls, sitting out to the left side of the corridor, by one of the doors that had gotten confused about what it was supposed to be doing and settled on partially sliding its component halves up and down in a woefully asynchronous dance between _‘I should be open, right?’_ and _‘Wait, shit, I’m supposed to be closed!’_

My heart was fucking pounding. I swear to god I nearly shot the damn thing then and there.

I should’ve, really.

But, no, like every other dipshit out there, I didn’t trust my fucking instincts, because shooting shit at random is fucking stupid.

I edged my way carefully back towards the door, and got all the way to it before the bugs burst from the fuckin’ baby head and fuck shit fuck.

There were too many to have fit inside the fucking thing, god dammit, _CHRIST!_

The bugs were little fuckers. Four legs, round bodies, enough bio-luminescence to show you perfectly what they were even in a shitty dark fucking corridor.

Fuck.

Did I say fuck?

Mom said I said fuck too much, but fuck you, cunt, you treated me like shit and I’m on a fucking spaceship anyways, I’ll swear until I make the goddamn sailors uncomfortable.

I hosed the little green spider shits with gunfire, my weapon’s muzzle-blast doing more damage than the shitty little flechettes it shot, because exploding micro-darts, while better than fuckin’ lead balls, are still not the ideal goddamn weapon for swarms of little… whatever the fuck these things are.

I retreated through the door and slipped an ‘incendiary device’ through the gap as its proverbial yawning portal slid shut.

Incendiary device means fucking _grenade_ , by the way. Fucking fire grenades.

Whoever came up with that shit was a genius. Hats off, you beautiful pyromaniacal son-of-a-bitch.

I leaned against the door, appreciating the muffled _THWUMP_ of the grenade, and realized my partner wasn’t where I fucking left her.

The smear of lithium grease and motor oil and blood on the wall and floor opposite me was still there, but she was gone.

_Fuck._

**Author's Note:**

> The old man made me do it, honest.


End file.
